World War Z (The lost Interviews)
by watchdog210
Summary: A collection of Lost interviews edited from the original volume of World War Z. Follows the stories of several fictional character from many different genres caught up in the Zombie wars and how they survived.


World War Z

The Lost Interviews

Author's notes: After reading WWZ for the umpteenth time I got to thinking, "How would some of our favorite fictional characters deal with the zombie outbreak and the WWZ format seems tailor made for this. As such, this will be a mega crossover. One chapter = one interview = one fandom. I have a pretty crazy schedule so updates will be sporadic at best, but I will keep this going as long as I can. Now, on with the show.

And Of course, I own nothing.

_(When I originally wrote WWZ, I had way more material than would ever fit in one book and still be coherent. These tapes sat in my desk for over a year, their stories calling out to me, begging to be told. So here you have them. As before, I have tried to remove myself as much as possible and just let the story be told. I will say this though, just because these interviews didn't make the first cut in no way diminishes their importance of the importance of the of the subject.)_

Chapter One

1060 West Addison

Chicago Police Headquarters,

Chicago Illinois,

Late Spring.

The young man that leads me to my interview can't be more than nineteen or twenty years old. Slim and fit he looks like what you would think the modern Law Enforcement Officer should look like and his dark blue uniform suits him well. His leather gun-belt creaks a little as we stand in the elevator, waiting to arrive on the 6th floor. The new Police Headquarters building, built post war is only seven floors and was built with new construction techniques to be more defensible and used materials, ironically enough, recycled from the old police administration building. As the elevator doors open the young officer leads me down a short hall and knocks on a wooden door at the end of the hall. The door reads "Irene Vincent, Asst. Chief of Police." The Officer has a short conversation with the Chief and then waives me in.

The occupant rises, comes around the plain battleship gray, government issue desk and takes my hand in hers. Her grip is firm, but not uncomfortable and her gaze is direct, as if she can see right through me. Her uniform fits her well, differing only in the fact that as part of the command staff she wears a white shirt, three gold stars on her collar marking her rank. Her black hair, lightly streaked with gray, is tied back in a simple ponytail, her blue eyes, striking in contrast to her dark complexion, seem old beyond their years. She is also the only one of my interview subjects to address me by name.

"Mr. Brooks, please come in, can I offer you something? Coffee, Soda?" She asks as she moves back behind her desk.

_(No, thank you.)_

She turns to the door, "Thank you Steven, that will be all." and the Officer, Steven, closes the door.

"So," she says, where would you like to begin?"

_(Where ever your comfortable)_

She sighs and begins,

"I wasn't always a cop, in fact I didn't become a cop till after the war. Weird huh. Before the war I was a gunsmith and ran a gun shop, Gunsmith Cats, with my best friend in the world, May Hopkins. I enjoyed what I did, and I was good at it. I'd get people come in from Ohio, Minnesota, Arkansas, Kentucky and from as far away as Texas. Several nationally ranked, competitive shooters used my guns to win state and national titles, and I was proud of that."

She chuckles, her warm smile softening her eyes just a little, then it turns wistful.

_(That's not all you did, is it?)_

"You've done your homework. No, it isn't. On the side I was also a Bond Enforcement Agent. What you would call a bounty hunter. May and I would hunt down criminals who jumped bail, and bring them back to jail for a portion of the bond. I went by Rally back then, and I, no, we were good. Very good."

She shows me a picture on her desk. The picture is old, prewar, and well worn, but the frame is new. In the picture, a much younger Irene stands in front of a vintage blue Mustang with a small blonde and a dark haired taller man.

"That's me with May and her Husband Ken. My friend, Roy Coleman, the current Chief, took that about a week before the panic really hit. I remember the day. We had nothing to do, The shop was closed, no bond jumpers needed brought in. Just a lazy Sunday afternoon. So we thought a cookout was in order. You know the kind, throw some steaks on the grill, have a couple of beers, watch some football, but fate had other plans. This was the day the world, my world went sideways. After the picture was taken, Roy set up the grill and got the coals going, his wife was inside making some corn bread and I was washing my Cobra. That's when Becky showed up."

_(I looked quizzically at her so she explained.) _

"Another good friend, Becky Farrah, an investigative journalist, and information broker. I swear, that girl could have solved the whole JFK thing if she'd really wanted to. Damn..."

She pulls a tissue from her desk and dabs her eyes.

_(We can stop if your uncomfortable)_

"No, it's okay. I miss her is all. Like I said. She was scary good. So she came over that day and I knew something wasn't right. She was agitated. That's the thing with her, she didn't rattle, ever. She wasn't a fighter, but she always kept a clear head, and now she was clearly upset. You have to remember, this was early spring, one of the first few really warm days of the year. We had heard all of the reports the previous fall, rabies, an unknown strain, then phalanx hit the market and boom, all was right with the world. We collectively thought we were in the clear. After all, it had happened before, SARS, H1n1, West Nile, we had no reason to believe this time would be any different. If we only knew then what we know now. But I digress, Becky came over with a thick file and several disks. I mean she had it all, newspaper articles from a dozen countries, video files, still photos even a few documents clearly marked CLASSIFIED. Apparently she had been working on this for a while and her findings were, unsettling, to say the least. Dead bodies rising up and attacking people, and the people that were attacked, died, rose up and attacked other people, rinse and repeat. If it had been anyone else, well, let's be honest here, it sounds more SCIFY channel then History channel. But Becky and I have history together. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt. As we read the file, the grill all but forgotten things became clear. Hell, I still don't know where she came up with half of this, and I don't want to know, but one thing was for sure, if even a quarter of this was true, then the shit had most assuredly hit the fan."

She paused, let out a breath and took a sip of water, then a second, and continued.

"Later that afternoon Roy's pager went off. He called in and his face went white. He told me that every officer was to report in. All vacations were canceled, all officers on leave were reinstated, and even the Cadets from the Academy were put on the streets. Not only had the shit hit the fan, it was being spread with a fire hose. Needless to say, it was bad. Roy said that the South side was overrun. Zack just came out of nowhere. The Police were pulling out and were going to try to hold the line at the river. Then he said something that really scared me. He told me to go to the city and empty my shop. You see, Gunsmith Cats was in the city but I lived in North Aurora. Roy told me to clean out all the guns and ammo I had at my shop and bring them home. So that's what I did. May and I drove up in her little Fiat, which turned out to be a good idea because her car was so small traffic was no problem. When we got there, the shop had been looted. It was a mess. All the ammo behind the counter was gone. Holsters, boots, backpacks, knives, anything that wasn't nailed down was gone. Hell, someone had even taken a torch to the steel locking bars over the display cases and cleaned out all my long guns. I let out a sigh of relief when I went in the back. They had tried but had not been able to get in the vault. You see, I had a bank style vault in the back where I kept the rest of the stock. Hand guns, rifles, shotguns, full autos, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, the works. What they had gotten out front wasn't good, but we could live with out it. We still had the bulk of my stock, and even then I didn't take everything. I only took what I thought would be useful. All the handguns, the AR's, AK's all the shotguns, all three of my 249's, both my Thompson, a few other things and all the ammo we could get in the shop van, which proved to be quite a lot. I was silently thanking Bean for talking me into buying the heavy duty van instead of the minivan I had been looking at. What I left behind were the exotics. Either they were hard to get ammo for, or they were unreliable collectors items. As were leaving I saw Mrs. Perkins in her bakery across the street. I knew that her husband was over seas in the Army so it was just her and her son. I asked her to come with us but she wouldn't go. The bakery was all she had. I gave her an AR 15, a Glock and couple hundred rounds. It was all I could do. I felt bad as we drove away. I never saw her again. I'd like to think she made it."

She paused again, looked at the clock and said,

"This is going to take longer than I thought to tell the whole story. Join me for lunch? Sal's has a great cheese steak."

We both leave the office and walk slowly through the halls, she stops several times to make small talk with some of the Officers, calling every one by name. It was obvious that Chief Vincent was well liked and respected by the Officers under her command.

As we sat down at one of the outdoor tables she looks to the counter and holds up two fingers. The cook nods and goes to work.

"Don't bother with the menu," She says, "what you want is the cheese steak deluxe with fries. Trust me."

We make small talk for several minutes until the food arrives, and she is right. This is what I wanted. After we finish out sandwiches we settle in to finish the interview.

She sighs, and begins...

"Where was I...oh yes, the river. The panic had yet to hit, at least officially, and Yonkers was still a couple weeks off, but in reality, everything was already going to hell. It was, ironically, those very people charged with protecting the public that were the ones that helped the, whatever it was, spread. Think about it. A Paramedic gets bitten while trying to restrain a 'combative patient' and transports them to the nearest hospital. Later he dies, reanimates, and goes after the closest person to him. A Cop responds to a disturbance, gets bit fighting with an 'unruly suspect' gets treated and goes back to work. It was the cruelest of irony. You call for help and there was a good chance that your rescuers brought the infection right to your door. Firefighters did a little better. Firefighting turnout gear was thick enough to protect them from the majority of bites. They began wearing it all the time, but in the end, even they fell. That explains why we had so much of it at Wrigley. We used it for armor, but I'll come back to that."

"The river. Chicago's last stand. I wasn't there, but I heard the stories. It was bad. As bad as it gets, and eventually, it too, fell. I on the other hand had made it back to the house and we started unloading the van. Roy had already left taking his wife with him. That was the last time I saw him till after the war. It was Me, May, her husband Ken, Becky, and sometimes a friend, Bean Bandit, would stay for a while, but never too long. He said he could do more on the move than hiding out. I can't say I blame him. Once we dug in we didn't leave the house for five months. Other than looking for food or other supplies we stayed in the house. We conserved ammo, slept in shifts, and stayed quiet. That worked, for a while. We lasted until winter set in. That's when we found out that Zack froze in winter. That was a blessing...a blessing and a curse."

She goes quiet, pensive,

_(We can stop if you need to.)_

"No, no, it's okay. Now that I've started, I need to get all it out. Exercise my demons as it were. It was full on winter, sometime in December, or maybe January, I don't know for sure, we were in an old Wal-Mart, in the back looking for anything useful. By now the pickings were pretty slim. We learned an important lesson that day, and we learned it the hard way. We all know that Zack freezes in winter. What most people didn't know, we certainly didn't, was that if Zack was indoors, in a building, shielded from the worst of the weather, it might not freeze completely. We learned that lesson the hard way. Becky was searching the stock room and found half a case of chicken soup. She was so excited about her find she let her guard down. There was a drager, you know, the ones missing their legs, anyway, Becky holstered her Browning, reached for the box and Zack took a chunk out of her hand. She screamed and shot the bastard on reflex then looked at her hand. We wrapped a tourniquet around her wrist so tight her hand turned purple, but we both knew the score. She was bit. It was only a matter of time. We decided to go back to the house, give her a chance to say good bye. That was a bad night."

"We had a last meal, said our goodbyes, and then she and I walked out side. She couldn't do it you see. Not that she lacked the nerve, she'd put down others before. People we'd come across. But she was Catholic. She couldn't commit suicide. She didn't have to ask. We stood there, we cried, hugged, cried some more, laughed, cried even more, and then she looked me in the eye and said she was ready. I used her Browning. It seemed only right. I'll never forget her last words. "Take care, Irene."

"I don't know how long I sat in the yard, crying but when I finally turned to go back to the house, I saw Ken, siting on the roof with a rifle, keeping watch. I know he's May's husband, but I loved him for that. We were all family, and that night we lost one of our own. The let me have my space when I needed it, and were there when I couldn't be alone any more."

She sighs, her eyes moist with emotion. She hiccups and a small sob escapes her lips as she turns away. A minute later she turns back, once again in control.

"I'm sorry," she says with a wan smile on her face. "Can't have the second top cop in the city bawling in the street."

_(No apology needed. We've all lost friends...family.)_

"That we have Mr. Brooks, That we have."

And we both raise our glasses in a silent toast to all those we have lost. We shared a moment of connection that I have rarely had with any of my subjects. Todd Wainio comes to mind. After a moment she begins to speak again.

"Not long after, we decided that we needed to move, and we needed to do it while it was still cold. The original plan was to get out of the city and,...wait for it," she chuckles, "go north. After all, that's all we heard day and night, night and day. Go north, GO north, GO NORTH, at least until all the TVs died. So that's what we were going to do. I left a letter for Bean, we loaded the van, used the last of the gas we had been saving and set off. We didn't get far. We tried to go around Chicago but every route we took was blocked somehow. Finally we plunged into the city itself. We did pretty well for a while, sticking to the side streets we were able to get surprisingly far. As we got closer to Lakeshore Drive we started to see more and more evidence of other people making a stand. There were these piles of Zack corpses, and a few humans ones, on the street. That made me uneasy. We made it as far as Racine and Newport when the last of the gas ran out. From there we went on foot. I'd at least wanted to make it to the lake but it was not to be. We started moving south because we knew that the EL was only a block away and we thought it would be our best bet. That's when the patrol found us. "

She pauses to take another sip of soda.

_(Patrol?)_

"Yea, apparently, a group of survivors holed up in Wrigley Field, dug in and made it home, and imagine my surprise when the patrol leader came up to me and called me by name. Turns out it was someone I had 'worked with' on occasion. I knew her only as Riff Raff. She was a hell of a driver and courier before the war. She convinced us to go back with her and we ended up joining the group at Wrigley."

She continued, "1060 West Addison. Anybody who's seen the Blues Brothers knows that address. Wrigley Field. It started as a Red Cross/IL National Guard station, and soon became a survivor colony. Not a bad choice really, the stadium was relatively secure before the fortifications and the people had already sealed off all but two entrances, the main entrance and a smaller maintenance dock on the opposite side.."

"Riff Raff laid out the rules to us, pretty simple really. We were welcome to come back with them but we had to work for our shelter. Every one had to pull their own weight. If we wanted to leave we were free to do so but we could only take what we came in with. Seemed pretty straight forward. When I told her what we had in the van a couple blocks away, she sent a runner back to Wrigley. In thirty minutes he returned with a five gallon can of gas. We gassed up the van, piled in and headed to Wrigley."

_(I heard it got pretty bad there.)_

"It did, for a little while, at least the first year, but their leader, an IL National Guard Major named Park, he had a plan. They were already collecting rain water and melting snow, and had plans to farm on the field in the spring. Till then they had stockpiled canned food, MRE's, dry goods, hell, they even had some frozen meat they were packing in snow to keep fresh. Where they found that I'll never know, but the point is they had enough to last at least till spring. Well that is if spring would've come on time. The average temp dropped what, 8, maybe 10 degrees worldwide? Doesn't sound like much does it, but what a difference it made. The plan was to start planting in late March. Yea, that didn't happen. When we got the first seeds in the ground it was almost June. And by mid October we were already seeing the first frost. That first year's crops were small, but just enough to hold us. The next year, spring was just a little earlier and fall was just a little later. By the third year we were getting almost normal crops. It didn't hurt that we lost about 1/5 of our people. A few left, more died, but we held on."

_(So things started to improve?)_

"Yes, slowly. We became a community, everybody pitching in, pun most certainly intended. My skills as a gunsmith were invaluable. Not just repairing weapons, or making ammunition, but in general maintenance around the compound. After we settled in May and I were put to work in the Armory. Everybody over the age of 14 had a handgun, the sentry's working the wall had rifles, mostly M4s, and there was an M249 at the gate. Everything else was stored in a maintenance work shop on the B2 level. The first thing I did was take inventory. I had to know what we had, what worked, what could be fixed and what was scrap. Believe me, nothing went to waste. There were a few M4s that were beyond repair, at least with the equipment I had on hand, but they weren't without value. I stripped them down, used the parts to fix a few other rifles and what I didn't need right away I stored. Like I said, nothing wasted. It did help that the majority of our weapons were standardized, mostly coming from the National Guard and Police stations."

_(That had to help.)_

"It did, a lot. It wasn't the Ritz, but we had it pretty good, at least when you compare us to some of the other blue zones. A lot of work went on that winter. Mostly scavenging, stock piling, storing parts and securing the perimeter. We didn't so much build that winter as we collected materials to build with. We would look at what we wanted to, what projects we needed done and collect the parts now, while it was still cold and we could move about with relative impunity. The only real building that went on was fortifying and expanding the perimeter. The stadium itself was pretty much secure, and were able to carve out a small part of the parking area for a holding area and quarantine zone. You know, for new people wanting to join our group. It worked pretty well."

_(So you had people joining your group?)_

"Not many but it did happen. One that sticks out is a guy named Paul, I never knew his last name. Really nice guy. He wore a wedding ring but refused to talk about it. There was a lot of that back then. He came to us some time early in year three, and I'm glad he did. He was instrumental in getting our lighting and heat going. You see, he was an electrician. During that second winter we had collected several solar panels from businesses, houses, anywhere we could get them. We weren't really sure how they worked but we knew they were important. Paul was able to install them on the roof and use them to charge all the car batteries we collected. In turn we used the batteries to run lights and space heaters. That's when our quality of life really improved. People weren't getting sick as often and could spend more time working. The crops we'd planted started doing better, so we were eating better. I won't say life was good, but it wasn't bad. We pretty much kept it together till the Army showed up. That was a party let me tell you."

_(I'd heard about some of the parties at other blue zones.)_

"More like a three day drunk." she said and laughed, a real genuine laugh. " I'll remember that day forever. Interesting fact, I heard that after the ARMY came to the blue zones, the birth rate in that area almost tripled. I'm not surprised."

"One thing that had been plaguing the AG groups, particularly AG North was the number of bobby traps. Most had been left by people trying to make a stand, either they finally bugged out, leaving them in place, or more likely they had, for whatever reason, had not made it. Now most of the traps were the low tech kind. Pungi sticks rigged on a door or buried in the yard, the odd shotgun shell rigged to a door, things like that. But sometimes they were a little more dangerous. I remember an AG Sergeant telling me of the time they he lost almost a whole squad because some guy had got some Comp-B from a demolition site near by and had rigged it to a home made pressure plate in his driveway. It was a small amount, maybe 3 or 4 ounces, but it was enough to take out 6 guys in the initial blast and 4 more when the house came down."

_(I had also heard stories like this)_

She drained her glass and motioned for a refill.

"Well, May and Ken had been working with me in the armory and while they both are very smart and learn fast, guns were not their specialty. Ken had worked for, well let's lust say that while he was very skilled he did not come by that skill honestly, and May had learned at his hand."

_(What skill set did he have?)_

"They were explosive experts. Good ones. We just didn't have much of a use for that at Wrigley. May had sat with the Captain in charge of this Company, laid out her skills and made her play. You see, she just couldn't sit by while her skills could save lives. The Captain thought about it and at first denied the request. His reason, all the forward working EOD techs had to have a spotter/marksmen with them for cover and he couldn't spare the men. Ken would've volunteered for that duty in a heartbeat but Ken suffered from MS. Most days he was good but he never knew when a flare up would happen. That's when I stepped up. I would go has her spotter. I had left the armory in the capable hands of Paul the electrician and got ready to head out. May was spending some quality time with Ken before we left and I was putting our kit together. I knew we would be working 1 to 2 miles ahead of the line, scouting and clearing any traps we came across. I wanted to travel light. I settled on my trusty CZ 75, a full size AR 15 with a 2x Bushnell scope, and a Marine KBAR knife. I set May up with a Smith and Wesson M&P 9mm, and an M4 Carbine with an ACOG and any tools she deemed necessary. Anything else we needed we would get when we checked in with the AG every couple of days."

_(Did Ken stay at Wrigley?)_

"No, after we left with the ARMY he went to 29 Palms in California to train new Army EOD techs. May was going to miss him but she was glad to have him behind the Rocky line. We traveled with the AG for a couple of days traveling around Lake Michigan on I94 when we came to the Indiana State line. The AG made camp there and May and I left early the next morning. We had enough supplies to last 4 or 5 days if were careful. It didn't take long before we found our first assignment. The road had been barricaded with cars and an overturned bus. I took up a position on the roof of a Taco Bell and May went to work. In the surrounding area she found no less than 6 claymore mines that she rendered safe and almost half a pound of C4 rigged to the blockade itself. That must have been a last resort move. Not only did she disarm the whole thing she packaged the C4 and added it to her stash. That girl was an artist when it came to explosives. We radioed back to the group that the blockade was safe and could be moved when they got here and then pressed on. The next few months were like that. I'd take up an over-watch position and May would work her magic. We had a few skirmishes and twice had to be bailed out by a fire team, but overall, we had a good record. Well that was until the Battle of Trenton."

_(Trenton was one of the last big battles of the war, along with NYC and Yonkers 2, right?)_

"Yea, at least for AG North. I heard that Central had a bad time of it in Atalanta and AG South took a real pounding in Apalachicola, but for us, Trenton was it. In fact, for May and I it was over before it really begun. We were about a half mile ahead of the line, heading back when we were ambushed, Not Zack this time but some asshole that had decided that Trenton was his and wanted no part of the ARMY. We were pinned down in this old Starbucks, taking fire from 3 sides. A fire team was on the way to help us but til then we were on our own. We thought if we could just clear a route we could escape. May had pulled out an old grenade, one she had collected from a trap a few days ago and pulled the pin. She popped up, threw the grenade and just as it left her hand, one of the assholes pinning us down scored a one in a million shot. He hit the grenade and it detonated. The blast took off the last three fingers on her right hand and shrapnel took her right eye. I patched her up as best I could but for all intents and purposes we were out of the fight. A few minutes later the fire team showed up and kicked some major ass. We were evacuated behind the line and eventually made it to 29 Palms where a rehab center had been set up. I couldn't stayed at the front but there was no point to it, besides, I wasn't regular ARMY anyway. May did recover, although her right eye is permanently blind. By the time she was well enough to leave the Hospital the war was pretty much over. She and Ken stayed in Calli for almost a full year after the war. As did I."

_(What happened then)_

"Well I got a letter from Roy. Turns out he was rebuilding the Chicago PD and he needed people he could trust. So May, Ken and I packed up and went home. The trip took about two weeks, road trip took on whole new meaning after the war. We made it home settled in and about a week later I was sworn in as the Assistant Chief of Police. Ken came on board as a civilian instructor for the Bomb Squad, and May, well lets just say that motherhood suits her. She pretty much retired after that."

She took a long, cleansing breath, and it seems like a weight had been lifted from her.

"You know, tomorrow night The Cubs are playing back at Wrigley for the first time since the war..."

She broke out in a wide grin,

"And I have great seats."


End file.
